Neighborhood.

So, it's been a while. Crazy stuff: we bought a house. Now here we are, settled a little bit more, and I'm ready to do this again. A little bit.

I have some thoughts about staying and settling, and this is the opposite of what I thought for my life 4 years ago. I wrote a little bit about this last August, and that was a mere three weeks before we bought our house (which we didn't know we would do at that point). 

Here's a link to that post: http://eliselo.blogspot.com/2012/08/staying-put.html?showComment=1345935978643#c4836143285117010783

And here's a link to a post by a blogger that I admire greatly (though I've never met her). This post encouraged me so much.
http://sarahbessey.com/in-which-i-radically-stay-put/

Like she says, this is hard and it's shaping me. Little things, things that I didn't even notice needed to be changed. But they're changing and it's so hard and so necessary. I think I'm discovering things about myself that I never knew before, things hidden deep down inside that given the opportunity they arose with a passion. 

And then recently I read this: http://www.neighborfoodblog.com/2013/02/on-staying-for-better-or-worse.html 

And I agree again. The Church rarely talks about this and it's hard and so beautiful. We just moved in here at the beginning of winter, but now it's spring. The neighborhood is starting to wake up again, and every time we're outside on our porch for more than three minutes, we meet someone new. I love that.